"Payback's a bitch. Now it's your turn."

He didn't even wait a beat before lowering his lids to half mast and eyeing me up and down. The look on his face was thrilling enough, and I could see how any girl would be helpless at the mere sight of those green eyes traveling along her person. Hell. I melted into a puddle easily enough.

He leaned a bit closer and raised a hand to my cheek, tucking a stray curl back under my hat, his fingers swiping behind my ear and raking down the line of my hair to the ends. He gave a playful tug to the strand in his grasp before twirling it around his finger, refocusing his attention back to my face. His touch sent shivers through me as his eyes bored into mine, and I was panicked at the thought that he was going to kiss me. My fight or flight response had taken an extended vacation, and I was left staring into those smoldering green eyes as a small smile broke from his beautiful lips, sending my heart racing into overdrive.

And then, God help me, he added his honeyed voice to the equation. "What's your sign? Because I think we should fuck."

"What?" I immediately found myself busting up; that was so not what I was expecting him to say. "Oh my God, that's horrible," I laughed out, not sure if I was grateful or heartbroken with the recent turn of events.

He laughed back. "Your turn."

I was still trying to recover from the lightning bolts running under my skin, but the fact that he had me laughing managed to loosen me up a bit. I guessed he wasn't going to take this game as seriously as I thought. No matter. This version was way more fun, and a hell of a lot safer.

Hunching my shoulders like a caveman, I offered in my sleaziest Jersey-guy voice, "That's a nice outfit. It would look betta on my bedroom flaw."

"Cute shoes. Let's fuck," he shot back.

"You have beautiful hair. I can't wait to see what it'll look like sprawled across my pillow."

"Hi, I'm Zac. Wanna fuck?"

"I'm sensing a pattern here."

We both cracked up as he shrugged. "I told you. I'm honest. Women respond to that."

"Yeah, sure, women who are looking to" Even though he'd just dropped a handful of F-bombs in my presence, I couldn't find a way to say it back to him. "looking for the same thing as you, you mean."

He stopped laughing at that, giving out a heavy breath as he turned in his seat. "Yeah, I guess." He put his forearms against the bar and focused on his clasped hands, surprising me when he sighed, "Actually, I don't know what I'm looking for, Ave."

My heart sped up involuntarily when I heard him say my name. And heck, not even my name, but his very own personal nickname. Ave! Oh God. It sounded so much better coming from his lips than it should have.

I was so elated at his words that it took me the extra second to recognize the weight behind them. I broke out of my own euphoria when I realized what he'd said and registered his defeated pose. His shoulders were slumped and he was swirling the snow on top of the bar into a little pile with his fingertips. I never imagined he was capable of being so contemplative.

"Are you alright?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said to his hands. "It's just that sometimes I don't know. It gets tiring, you know?"

"What does?"

He didn't bother to answer, and simply snapped out of his sullen mood as he turned toward me. "Hey. You must be freezing your tail off out here. Let's go back inside."

I didn't care how cold it was out there. I would have welcomed the frostbite if it bought me a little more alone-time with him. Not that I could say that, however.

I was still concerned about his brooding comment, but he didn't seem as though he was looking for some big heart-to-heart, so I let it go. "Yeah, okay. I didn't even tell Casey and Simon where I was going. They might be worried."

The old Zac was back as he chuckled, "Yeah. Especially if they knew you were out here with me."

I was in the process of hopping off my stool, but his comment stopped me cold. "Why do you do that?" I asked. "Why do you put yourself down like that?"

He'd stood up, but he wasn't going anywhere. He looked at me blankly and said, "I don't."

"You do," I answered back. I'd only known him for little over a week, but that wasn't the first cutting jag I'd ever heard from him. "I'm starting to think your humor is three parts shock value and one part self-deprecation."

"So?"

"So, I guess it makes me wonder if you're happy."

"Of course I'm happy. I'm a Devil on the ice and a god between the sheets. What's there to be unhappy about?"

I could tell I wasn't going to get anywhere, and I let out a sigh. "My formula was missing a key component. I forgot to dip the whole specimen in conceit."

He smiled, seemingly impressed with my evaluation. "C'mon. Let's go."

We made our way back to the table to see that our friends were still connected at the lips. Zac gave me a nudge and said, "I don't think they've come up for air since we left. Yo, Sorenson!"

Simon managed to tear himself away from Casey's face and address us. "Oh look, babe. There are other people here."

Casey giggled and rested her head on Simon's shoulder. I'd say that their schmoopiness was sickening, but they were actually pretty adorable together. I took my hat off and smoothed my hair back down, gathering it into a ponytail with the tie at my wrist. It wasn't my best look, but it was easier than dealing with static-head all winter.

"Where did you run off to?" Casey asked.

"Ah. So you did come up for oxygen long enough to realize I was gone."

Simon gave Case a quick smooch on the top of her head. "Who needs oxygen when a beautiful girl steals your breath anyway?" He punctuated his rhetorical question with a huge grin aimed at Casey's smiling face.

I went to shoot an eyeroll at Zac, but he hardly looked as though he was sharing the joke. For one split second, I caught the intense stare he was focusing on my mouth. Almost immediately, his eyes met mine as his lips quirked into a slight grin, snapping his expression back into casual mode.

Good for him and all, but I was feeling anything but 'casual' at the moment.

It was hard to feel laid-back when my new friend had just pulverized my insides.

Chapter Three.

SEPTEMBER 1996.

"Bottoms up, Buttercup."

Zac clinked his glass against mine and we both threw back our shots. It was his bright idea for us to "kick off the season in style," which would explain the fact that we were presently chugging back a couple of twenty-dollar whiskeys as if they were Wild Turkey.

We'd met up at the Welcome Back dinner earlier in the evening, and now we were cutting loose at Johnny's with the rest of the team. Casey was our designated driver, so after the reception, she shuttled me, Simon, and Zac over to the bar.

We'd become an unofficial foursome over the months, and a lot of the time, Zac and I wound up together, seeing as our best friends were normally joined at the lips. Casey and Simon had been dating pretty steadily over the past year, and I was really happy to see things happening between them. It looked as though he was going to turn out to be one of the good ones-a rare commodity in the NHL world. Oh, sure, I'd met a few. But a committed hockey player was about as rare as a Bigfoot sighting. For the most part, they simply didn't exist.

Zac sure as hell wasn't looking to settle down anytime soon.

He and I had been in each other's company a lot over the past year, and sometimes, the two of us would pair off by ourselves to take a breather, like we were doing now. Our encounters were normally in a group setting, though, so more often than not, I was relegated to nothing more than a member of his adoring entourage. I didn't gush all over him like the other girls-at least outwardly-so I was sure Zac figured he didn't have much use for me beyond our newly-solidified friendship. He generally only utilized his social skills in order to further his sexcapades, and I had no intentions of ever being part of one of them.

He liked new meat whenever possible, but sometimes, he'd take his pick from one of the regular groupies. Truly, I didn't judge. If they wanted to be passed around from guy to guy every other night, that was their business.

It just wasn't a scene I was into.

It was pretty painful having to watch him leave with a different girl every night, but it was even worse when Julie was one of his options. She was a girl from Zac's real life who would show up every now and again to hang out. She was nice enough, but it didn't stop me from disliking her. After all, she was the only one of those women that ever seemed to have any sort of relationship with him, and yet, she always gave off the vibe that she couldn't have cared less. I supposed that's why he let her hang around so often.

She lived in the city, and according to Simon, she and Zac were just friends. Yeah, right. The girl was gorgeous. Maybe it was a friends-with-benefits situation? But then, I couldn't understand why he bothered. He had plenty of benefits whenever he wanted them. I figured he must have really liked her to invite her out so frequently, even if they weren't actually "a couple."

So, it's not as though I ever considered dating the guy. Even if I allowed myself to consider it, I'd have to get in line behind a whole string of girls, and who the hell wants to be someone's last choice?

But the thing was, even though he was an unrepentant dog, he was fun. He was an entertaining guy to be around. I enjoyed our nights out together-or at least I did right up until the minute he'd leave with some other girl. It's not that I could even be jealous about it or anything, because I'd made it a point to keep him at arms' length since the first moment we met. And why wouldn't I? The dude had 'devastation' written all over him. I mean, seriously. I'd seen the boy in action and I knew what he was all about. Even if the stars aligned and by some miracle, we actually did hook up or something, I was well aware that he wouldn't stick around for more than a single night. And one single encounter would be completely self-destructive, because being left in the dust like that would just completely break my heart.

But even knowing that, I still found myself daydreaming about it. A girl could dream, couldn't she?

"Damn!" he growled, slamming his glass upside down on the bar. "Want another?"

I was still recovering from the burn of the first one, but managed to laugh out, "No, thank you."

He flashed me a dazzling grin and ordered us a couple beers before asking, "So how's school? Learning anything out there in the sticks?"

"Believe it or not," I countered, "even those of us who didn't go to some snobby university in a major city can still manage to pick up the random bit of knowledge every now and again. Hell, some of us even graduate."

He smirked at my jab. We both knew that leaving Boston College to play for the NHL was the best move he'd ever made. He had one hell of a season last year and was shaping up to be one of the breakout superstars of the team.

I'd started paying more attention to the games again since the past winter, and I suppose the reason why was fairly obvious. I knew it was probably pretty stupid and pointless, but seeing Zac-even on my TV-was my new favorite form of entertainment. He'd racked up over two hundred penalty minutes during his rookie year and wasn't showing signs of letting up anytime soon. No wonder his nickname was "Maniac."

It's not that he was a dick on the ice, he was just an extraordinarily aggressive player, and managed to get called out for it at every turn. Hooking, slashing, boarding But the most entertaining theatrics were witnessed when he was diving. The guy was a decent actor, and could sometimes manage to draw the penalty from the opposing team. But when he didn't? He'd protest the embellishment call until he was red in the face, then slam the boards with his stick on the way to his time out. And that was just the anger he displayed before ever receiving the fines.

Even when I wasn't glued to my TV, I still thought about him (despite my better judgment), and always looked forward to seeing him in the flesh. It wasn't every day that I found myself in the presence of someone that good-looking, and it was always thrilling during the occasions when I did. There was just nothing like that flippy feeling you got being around a gorgeous guy. Even when they were jerks, the butterflies in your stomach would betray you.

So, I didn't beat myself up about watching all those games. I loved hockey, it was my father's job, and catching a glimpse of Zac was simply a bonus. Just because we'd never be together didn't mean I couldn't look at the guy, right?

Looking at him never disappointed, but tonight, he was even more delectable than usual. He was wearing a dark gray suit which made him look less like the wild athlete he was and more like a suave, respectable gentleman.

A totally hot one at that.

"Well, that's good. I'm glad you're doing well out there." He tapped his bottle against mine and added, "I'm actually surprised you came tonight."

His lips quirked, trying to repress a smile. As if he was trying to get me to admit that I'd come back to see him. Fat chance.

"Yeah, well, my father asked me to be there. He wasn't too thrilled that I skipped it last year."

"He likes to show you off."

I picked at the bar napkin under my drink, trying to will myself not to blush from Zac's adorable grin. "He's proud of me, if that's what you mean."

"I can see why." He raked his eyes over my floral dress and added, "You've sure got some assets to be proud of."

For as much time as we spent in each other's proximity, it was inevitable that I'd find myself on the receiving end of Zac's flirting. I always tried to take it with a grain of salt, though, knowing his playful comments were just a part of who he was.

As fun as it was to play along, I think I liked seeing the serious part of him more. He didn't let it slip out too often, but I loved those moments. For all his life-of-the-party personality, it was nice to get the rare glimpse of him just being himself every once in a while. I got the impression that I was one of only a very few people that he ever allowed into his real life.

"I'm going to hit the bathroom" I diverted, sliding off of my stool and making my escape.

It was on my way back that I literally bumped into an old friend. Coming down the hallway just as I was leaving it was Nick Stradlater, a guy I used to date in high school.

Nick was a year older than I was, and was known to everyone in town as The Devirginator. I'm not going to go into detail here, but let's just say I'm able to report the validity of his moniker from firsthand experience.

We'd only dated for a few months, long enough to get the job done before he shipped off for college. Considering the main reason I even dated him was to get my deflowering over with, I wasn't terribly heartbroken when we broke up.

"Avery Brooks!" he laughed out, throwing his arms around me like we were old pals.

"Hey Nick," I said with the last breath of air in my lungs.

He finally released his boa-constrictor hold on me to step back and say, "I haven't seen you in years."

"Three years, Nick. It's only been three. How are you?"

I eyed him cautiously, trying to gauge how the years had treated him. He was still tall, obviously. Messy dark hair. Wearing a pink Izod, frayed along the bottom, which earned him fashion points in my book for pulling off a preppy-yet-rockstar look. He looked good, but I was hardly overjoyed to see him. I mean, it was embarrassing to have to confront someone who once saw me naked. And based on the way his eyes were presently scrutinizing every inch of my body, I started to believe he was envisioning me in such a state right now. Jeez, the guy was still a cad.

"I'm great! Just transferred over to William Patterson, so I'm home now. You?"

"Penn. Just started my junior year."

I was peeking over his shoulder, clearly looking to get back to the bar, but Nick's towering form was blocking my escape. He was practically wedged at the mouth of the narrow hallway we were standing in.

"Junior year, huh?" He shot a toothy sneer at me as he added, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it your junior year when you and I?"

"Dated?" I finished for him.

"I was going to say 'fucked.'"

Of course he was.

"Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but we did a lot more than just... that. We were together for four months!"

"Guess I just choose to remember the good part."

If I thought for even one second that he was only kidding, I would have spent a few more minutes catching up with the guy. But because I knew he was entirely serious, I decided to put an end to the conversation.

Before I could, however, he chucked me under my chin and said, "Smile, sweetheart. It can't be that bad."

Ugh.

Normally, nothing pissed me off more than when some dude tried to tell me what facial expression I should be wearing. But I got the impression that maybe Nick just needed a little help in the tossing-out-a-line department. I chuckled to myself when I thought about how Zac could offer a class or something.